


Break the Shell

by Ariadne_Dai



Series: Lies and Love in the Mushroom Kingdom [3]
Category: Super Mario Bros.
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Character Interpretation, Canon Trans Character, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Poetic, Polyamorous Character, Post-Colonial, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Stream of Consciousness, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, poemfic, queer radical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4035403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariadne_Dai/pseuds/Ariadne_Dai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fiery young woman from the marshes of Subcon has something to say to her foreign conquerors. She's been called, among other things, "Birdo." This is her story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break the Shell

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by [this post](http://murdarioxstomp.tumblr.com/post/110675575087/onlysaneman-murdarioxstomp-good-evening-tumblr) by murdarioxstomp and onlysaneman.  
>   
> 

Listen—  
I’m here to throw some words at you,  
Fire some ideas right at you like missiles,  
Aim them like arrows at your skull,  
And watch them shatter like eggshell  
Between your eyes.  
And I don't know  
If on impact you'll be turned about,  
Flipped upside-down to your death,  
And then come back reborn,  
Or just keep marching forward,  
Stupidly as ever,  
Shrunken, but undeterred—  
But I don't care,  
'Cause it doesn't really matter.  
These words are aimed at you,  
But they're not yours.  
They're mine, and I decide  
What a dozen is worth.  
  
They're not for you,  
Not for you to put in your toolbelt  
With your carpenter's measure and wrench.  
They're not of you,  
Not born out of your nature,  
They're not with you,  
Not among your stooges and allies,  
They're not from you,  
Not drawn from the wells you poison,  
And they're sure as shit not by you.  
But—if only because  
You pull every damn thing in the world  
Into the pages of your own story,  
I'll acknowledge that in part they're about you.  
  
But—more importantly—  
They're also about me,  
And that's why I have to say them.  
They're about the game we're playing,  
Have played, will play, will have played,  
Play right now. Right this moment.  
So let's break this notion open  
Like a crack to the skull.  
You've told your story.  
Believe me, I got the gist.  
You're good at telling it.  
Sit down and shut up for a minute.  
Because here's mine.  
  
When I was born,  
The world I was born into,  
Wasn't our own anymore.  
I was a stranger in my own homeland.  
We all were.  
  
I can hear you, even now,  
Taking issue with my words.  
Born? you'll say.  
Weren't you hatched from an egg?  
See, this, right here,  
Is exactly what I'm talking about.  
Just a few lines in,  
And you're already  
Telling me what I should say.  
You can't imagine, not for a minute,  
That there could exist a people  
Whose language didn't distinguish  
Between hatching and birth from a womb.  
What's the difference?  
They're both ways of becoming real,  
Becoming alive.  
It took a mammal like you  
To see that we were egg-layers  
And decide there had to be a difference.  
Now pipe down.  
  
Anyway—  
By the time I was born, the world was gone,  
And we lived in an alien place.  
Among the elders of the Masked Tribe, the Sh'gai,  
There's a story.  
They say the world is a dream.  
All our lives, all the turnings of the seasons—  
They're really the ebb and flow of a slumberer's vision,  
Each of us images drawn up from some huge subconscious well,  
Flickering briefly for a time,  
Then gone, breaking on the shores of the mind  
Of a great Dreamer, snoring in the void.  
And when he wakes,  
The universe will end,  
And when he sleeps again,  
A new one will begin.  
  
Having taken a look at the state of things,  
I've come to agree with this notion.  
I think we do live in a dream.  
But not in the way they propose.  
The dreamer's not some primordial giant,  
But mortal, fragile, and foolish.  
You're the dreamer  
Who dreams our world,  
And you don't even know  
What you're making real.  
You dream us,  
And make us dream ourselves  
The same way you do.  
That's what's scary—  
That we forget we're in a dream  
And forget how to wake up.  
  
Let me back up—  
(While still keeping my eyes  
And my words aimed straight at you)  
By "you,"  
I don't mean only the famous newcomer,  
Mr. Johnny-Come-Lately,  
The handyman who's entangled himself  
With the Mushroom Regent,  
And brought a whole kingdom  
Under the grip of his sweaty glove.  
I mean you, but not just you.  
Because you're just the latest  
In a long line of hairy dreamers  
Who dreamed our world away.  
So, extended though it is,  
I won't apologize for this apostrophe.  
You've been here a long, long, time,  
Wearing many faces,  
But in mind all one and the same.  
To shed some light on my own story,  
I'm going to tell the tale of your arrival,  
Not as you would,  
But as the soil under your boot would tell it.  
Here we go.  
  
Something like five,  
Maybe six hundred years ago,  
A doorway opened.  
A tunnel, maybe, through solid rock,  
Or a portal at the top of a ladder,  
Or many flights up a shining stair.  
The door opened,  
And men from another world stepped out.  
This is no big secret.  
Ask around, listen to the stories  
Of our grandparents,  
Follow the trails.  
The details are lost,  
But it's pretty clear what happened.  
Royal scholars in their ivory towers  
Pride themselves on figuring out the mystery,  
But the discovery keeps getting made  
Every few generations.  
The truth is everywhere  
If you know how to look.  
  
So, these men from another world,  
Pale of face, with thick, curly mustaches,  
Shining with brass buttons,  
Resplendent in their military regalia,  
Blinked in the sunlight  
And stood staring at the world  
That had allowed them in.  
They wandered until they met its people,  
And wondered at them,  
Called them monstrous and strange.  
And they talked amongst themselves,  
And said:  
"This is a new world.  
There are no people here.  
At least, not any like us.  
Here we can escape  
The burdens and cares of our own world.  
Let's carve this new land up  
And take it for ourselves."  
That's how you came to be dreaming our world.  
Because that's just what they did.  
  
The people of this world could fight,  
Oh yes, we could,  
And we fought and died,  
But these men brought their own weapons:  
Diseases, plagues for which we had no name,  
And the bitter taste of black gunpowder.  
They were clever, evil, hairy men,  
And they wanted to be kings.  
Kings were a curse they brought with them.  
They were born in a world of kings.  
They served them, worshipped them—  
When they found a world without kings,  
They wanted to become them.  
They fought us to have something to rule,  
And fought each other,  
To decide who'd be ruler.  
  
A few decades' fighting,  
And they'd carved out a territory  
From the rolling hills  
Of the little mushroom people.  
Those they hadn't killed  
Now served them,  
Their retainers,  
Their toadies,  
Handy, willing, and able.  
And they sat on a throne,  
Hairy interlopers  
Ruling a people of fungi,  
And called themselves the Mushroom Kings.  
That's how you build a glorious reign.  
Murder buys the jewels in every crown.  
  
Well, once the slaughter had died down,  
They had their kingdom and were happy with it.  
For a little while.  
Centuries passed,  
And many folks forgot  
That the mushroom men  
Had ever been separate  
From their fleshy kings.  
Even the kings forgot.  
But they still had greed in their bones.  
They grew hungry  
Like lean wolves.  
They wanted more.  
They wanted empire.  
They dreamed of their ancestors,  
Men like Jules the Seizer,  
Who turned one country  
Into the master of all the world.  
He got himself made a god for his efforts.  
A nice gig,  
If you like bloody sacrifices.  
The kings sure did.  
All they had to do  
Was whip up their subjects with patriotic passion,  
Tell a few useful lies about a hated enemy,  
And burn everything in their path to the ground.  
That was your recipe for empire,  
And you followed it to the letter.  
  
Oh, you couldn't conquer the whole world,  
But you built yourself an empire, all right.  
You came, with your soldiers and cannons and spears,  
And made us bow down to your flag.  
And that's when we knew our world was gone,  
And we were living in someone else's dream.  
  
*  
  
Enough of your exploits.  
They grow tedious.  
It's time to talk about me.  
  
Who am I?  
I'm an answer to a question.  
I'm a candle flaring up in the darkness.  
I'm the first few notes of a song  
That my people thought they forgot.  
I'm a firebomb thrown through a broken window.  
I'm the first word of a new conversation.  
I am always, utterly, irrevocably me.  
Dazzling in ribbons and lace,  
Dancing among garlands and roses,  
I blaze a trail on your eyes,  
And you remember me when I pass by.  
  
But to be more specific,  
I'm a girl  
Of a new generation,  
Day by day  
Figuring out how to rebuild  
What my people have lost.  
It's not clear  
If the castles you cast down  
Can ever be built up again.  
But I intend to try.  
  
Let me tell you about us.  
Once upon a time,  
We were the people of the marsh.  
In the beginning was the Marsh  
And the Marsh was with us,  
And the Marsh was us.  
We were born from the Marsh,  
And we have been here since before anyone  
Ever thought to put numbers to the years.  
Sing the song, the sweet and bitter song,  
Of how the Marsh hatched from an egg,  
Deep within the earth,  
And yearned to be alive,  
To have hands to touch,  
Eyes to see,  
Tongue to taste.  
But then the Child of the Marsh was born,  
Who could be all these things—  
Benna, the ancestor of our people.  
Sing that song,  
That old, great song—  
And sing all the old tales,  
How Benna taught us to fish,  
Taught us to hunt,  
Taught us to build homes,  
Taught us to care for each other.  
Sing of Benna's mischief  
And Benna's adventures.  
Sing of the gods Benna met  
And the gods Benna made.  
Sing of who we are.  
Sing, O Singer,  
Sing that song.  
  
In the beginning  
We lived in the world Benna had made for us,  
Lived by the laws Benna had written.  
Benna was our dreamer  
And we were Benna's dream.  
It was good.  
We swam through the marsh,  
Our slimy bodies shining  
In the morning light,  
Bright as the water.  
We dug our long noses through the mud,  
Searching for delicious grubs.  
We caught fish in our claws  
And took down wild game,  
Boars and ocelots and more,  
With our well-carved spears.  
If you want me to serve you up a simile,  
We're much like salamanders,  
Five feet from tip to tail,  
But with thicker, clawed limbs like lizards,  
And faces that pull forward  
In a great tubular snout.  
I see your eyes flicker—  
You know us.  
That's right.  
We're the Bar Doi.  
  
Our name—  
Even if it's been forgotten—  
Means people of the marsh,  
And that's just who we were  
In those long-ago days.  
We built houses from sturdy logs,  
Built them part in the mud,  
Part above—  
Built pools in them  
For easy access to the water.  
Our paths cris-crossed the marshes;  
We built from the bottom  
Into the mangroves and the treetops.  
Our towns—they were magnificent,  
The sound of flutes and drums  
Echoing through the trees  
As the torches of our festivals  
Lit up the night.  
  
And here's where it starts  
To get really close to the bone.  
There were three kinds of us, then.  
Each wearing a distinct hue.  
Listen closely.  
  
First in our processions  
Always came the Yevvi.  
I'll attempt a rough translation  
By saying they were women.  
Egg-layers, they were,  
Makers of great crafts  
And subtle artistries,  
And also bearers of our young.  
They could produce eggs in their long mouths—  
For that's how we lay our eggs,  
Not through our lower regions like some creatures do—  
And they used eggs both to bring forth children  
And to defend our villages,  
As well as in their crafts.  
They were the color of the lotus  
That sticks its head above the waters—  
A vivid fuchsia.  
  
Second came the Kaxi,  
Whom I'll translate as our men.  
They were our respected hunters—  
In great bands they'd go out  
To seek wild game  
And come back with fresh skins and meat.  
And when we clashed with our enemies,  
They'd be the first to our defense.  
From their mouths they could jet  
A great blast of flame,  
And these flames warmed our hearths  
And kept away jaguars in the night.  
Our men were the green of a summer leaf,  
And looked like dragons of the marsh.  
  
And finally came the Uzubi.  
Oh, the Uzubi!  
How we loved them!  
Last not from dishonor,  
But because they were the most honored of all,  
And presided over all our festivals.  
The Uzubi cannot be translated  
Into your language.  
They were Uzubi,  
And that's all I can say.  
Uzubi partook of both yolk and flame,  
And made them their own.  
Their eggs were darker, mottled,  
Their flames green and sulfurous.  
And their skin was as scarlet  
As the bromeliad,  
Red as a wound.  
The Uzubi were great shamans.  
They kept the stories and the secrets of a tribe,  
And knew the medicines for all illnesses and wounds.  
They'd been gifted with Benna's wisdom,  
And were called Benna's Beloveds.  
When the mangroves withered,  
When one of our number moaned  
In the grip of an evil torment,  
We'd ask an Uzub to set it right.  
The Uzub would take a powder from their pack  
As they'd been taught by their elders,  
Breathe it in,  
And go into a trance.  
They'd enter the dream of the sufferer,  
And drive out the demon afflicting them.  
They'd ride on the feathers of the marsh-birds  
Through the realm of the spirit  
To bring back what they found there,  
While we guarded their soul's safe return.  
Their wisdom was great,  
And they guarded the soul of the tribe  
As we guarded theirs.  
  
And one thing more I'll mention.  
We weren't serpents, but we knew how to shed our skin.  
For the Uzubi had taught us a secret.  
We knew how to move between the three kinds of Bar Doi.  
There were certain herbs,  
Subtle and ancient,  
That Benna had given to us  
At the start of the world.  
And if a green-skinned Bar Doi  
Tasted the right herb,  
And ate of its substance for a time,  
Her skin would turn the color of the lotus,  
She'd become small and lithe,  
And she'd be able to lay eggs like her mother,  
Revealed as not Kax, but Yevv.  
We knew the alchemy of our bodies,  
And knew that like the seasons,  
We could turn from one thing into another.  
  
When one of us needed to change in this way,  
They would speak to the elders,  
And a great celebration would be held  
To mark their passage.  
The Turning, we called it,  
And it was the greatest event we knew,  
A festival full of light and song,  
An affirmation of their new life to come,  
And a celebration of all that would continue.  
Most honored of all  
Were those who became Uzubi.  
For it is a rare calling that few feel,  
But when a young one heard the beat  
Of the shaman's drum,  
And shed emerald for crimson,  
Putting on the beads of Benna,  
Oh, we were never prouder of them than on that day.  
  
*  
  
All that's gone now.  
Like I said,  
We live in a different world these days.  
I walk down cracked streets,  
Past decrepit concrete buildings,  
Watch ash stirring in the alleys,  
And know that I can't go back there.  
It's all blown away in the wind.  
To tell this story,  
I've had to collect a million broken fragments  
And puzzle how they might fit together.  
It's a task I'll be working on  
For a long time yet.  
  
When one dream changes into another,  
It's damn near impossible  
To remember what the first one was.  
All the figures have changed their shape  
And changed their names:  
A little girl becomes a little mushroom,  
A mother, a man in green,  
And you can no longer hold the thread  
Of what their stories were about.  
What you did to us was like that.  
Except you changed the way things worked, too.  
You took the game,  
And remade it,  
Rewriting the rules,  
Changing all the pieces  
To match your own.  
And maybe if someone looked beneath the chipped paint,  
They'd find the truth shining through.  
They'd see the shape of another story.  
But it'd take a keen eye  
And a lot of work.  
That's where I'm at, right now.  
Picking away at your work,  
And trying to keep my head on straight.  
  
So.  
Let me tell you about the fall.  
  
You didn't understand us,  
When you came.  
Maybe you couldn't.  
But personally,  
I don't think you even tried.  
Having conquered our spears with cannon-fire,  
You shook your heads at our strangeness.  
What peculiar creatures  
You'd found in the wilderness!  
Egg-spitting salamanders?  
It was too much to be believed.  
When you heard our name, you mangled it,  
Called us "Birdoes"—  
Because of the eggs, get it?  
And it was a name that stuck.  
  
If our names and faces were strange,  
Our savage ways were stranger still.  
We had to be taught  
To live in houses of stone like yours,  
To put away torches and drums  
And quit our ululating chants.  
To forget Benna  
And worship at the altar of your Nailed God.  
"You see, Benna was a mistake  
You made on your way to the true God,"  
You said with a laugh.  
"You won't need him any longer."  
Him?  
Listen, if you think Benna's a him,  
Then you don't know a damn thing about Benna.  
  
So we tried to tell you,  
But you just wouldn't listen.  
And when you learned about the Uzubi,  
You recoiled in horror.  
"What degrading rituals  
They put their shamans through!"  
You told each other.  
"We'll put a stop to that depravity."  
And the Turning? Ha!  
You couldn't stomach it.  
To see us change scared you.  
For if we could change,  
How could you keep hold of us?  
How could you tell us what men and women were?  
If we could Turn, maybe we'd Turn on you.  
  
So you banned all that we'd held dear.  
It was just what you'd done, ages before  
When you conquered the little mushroom people.  
"Be men and women,"  
You told creatures  
Who reproduced by spores  
And had never known these things.  
"Choose one or the other,"  
You told them,  
"And choose for your children, too,  
Ever after."  
And if they chose wrongly,  
Picked a name that didn't match their muscles  
Or their fair face,  
You reserved the right  
To shove them back in line.  
That's how you made toadies of the mushrooms,  
And you came with them  
To do the same to us.  
  
Green and pink were fixed on your charts,  
Never to be altered,  
And red?  
Red you murdered in the swamp,  
Left red bleeding scarlet in the water  
And never looked back.  
We wept,  
But not where you could hear,  
For you had knives to our throats.  
So you built your garrisons,  
Your towns, your schools.  
You drained the marsh,  
Fearing its wildness,  
Its dangers,  
And left only a tiny part,  
Paving over the rest.  
And in your schools,  
On threat of violence,  
We forgot how to speak our language,  
Choked on our own tongues,  
And forgot Benna.  
You killed who we were.  
You killed Benna.  
You killed our soul.  
You killed our dream.  
And we began to live inside yours.  
That's how it happened.  
  
*  
  
A long time passed.  
I was born long after the fires had died down  
And the ashes had cooled.  
When the blood and the marsh had dried,  
Though the stain wasn't erased.  
I was born with pavement,  
Not water,  
Under my feet,  
In the world you'd made for yourselves.  
  
Growing up, I knew something was wrong.  
But we didn't talk about it.  
We couldn't.  
Not my parents, not my teachers, not anyone.  
There were no words for it left anymore.  
All we had were your words.  
So I grew up yearning for something,  
And not knowing what,  
A hunger gnawing in me  
For which I had no name.  
And I had no name for myself, either.  
Not a real one.  
Not yet.  
  
I don't want to talk too much  
About the child I was,  
Because who I thought I was then  
No longer means much.  
I didn't know what I know now.  
I hadn't woken from your dream,  
And so I dreamed myself  
As you dreamed me,  
And didn't know why I was in pain.  
  
I'll say this much:  
I grew up in a world  
Without a Turning.  
Didn't even know what one was.  
I was green, once,  
And I yearned to be like those who were pink,  
To be like them, to move like them,  
To bring forth eggs like they did.  
To have such courage and grace as them.  
And I didn't know what I was feeling.  
I imagined it was lust, made sick and rotten deep within me.  
And I wept in secret, ashamed,  
And told no one, not knowing  
That once we changed color like the leaves,  
Never stuck in summer.  
  
But I couldn't stop listening  
To fairy tales and whispered stories,  
And even dirty, bawdy jokes  
That told of transformations as powerful and strange.  
And though I wouldn't like them all these days,  
I'll never be ashamed again  
Of seeking those stories,  
Wanting them in my soul.  
And one day I was glad I listened.  
Because someone told me  
Of a man who hadn't always been green,  
And offered to introduce me.  
And when I met him,  
This brave and thoughtful man,  
He taught me how to wake up.  
And I learned that metamorphoses  
Were more real than I'd ever imagined.  
  
I learned the first fragments  
Of the knowledge we'd lost,  
And I joined others who also sought those truths,  
Those changes,  
And we gathered in secret places,  
Like a small cabin, hidden  
In what was left of the marsh,  
To talk and share our stories,  
And uncover the truth, and change,  
And we found the herbs that Benna had given us,  
So long ago,  
And we cultivated them anew,  
And the Uzubi lived again,  
And we became ourselves at last.  
  
Shit, I was so young, then.  
Shy and nervous and burning with dreams,  
Just coming into my girlhood,  
Learning how to say yes for the first time,  
How to do a million things  
I'd never thought possible.  
I don't think I could have done it,  
If there hadn't been others there,  
Teachers and confidantes and partners  
And friends.  
We only met in secret for a while.  
But soon,  
Being young and being daring,  
We were ready to take on a dream  
The size of the world.  
We became part of an enormous plan.  
Not ours alone, really.  
We just latched onto a bigger picture.  
A whole land was in uproar.  
A revolution was underway.  
  
There was a certain charismatic leader.  
A green man,  
One of the great frog people,  
The Haphthroah,  
Whose love-ballads roll down  
The southern valleys.  
Hward, his name was.  
He promised to make us all free.  
You see, the mushroom men,  
In building their empire,  
Lumped a bunch of conquered peoples together  
Into one great incoherent mass in the south.  
They grabbed a name from their books,  
Called it the province of Subcon,  
After a tribe of fairy folk we'd never met,  
And suddenly we were Subconians,  
As if it was a name we knew.  
  
Well, Hward's proposal was to break away.  
No longer would Subcon be subjugated or conquered.  
We'd be our own nation,  
Making our own rules,  
And give our Mushroom neighbors  
Something to think about it.  
All the diverse peoples of the south,  
Now made one whole.  
Yes—that's the sort of thing he said.  
From many shining threads,  
A single tapestry.  
Oh, it was good rhetoric.  
I believed in him, then.  
I know many folks did, too.  
These days, I'm more skeptical  
About what kind of country we would have made.  
  
If you look at what Hward did, how he thought,  
Not just what he said,  
It's clear he was that certain type of leader  
Who likes to look  
Like he's thinking about the People,  
When really he's thinking of himself.  
He starts off fighting for them,  
Maybe even believing what he says,  
But gets sucked in by the thrill  
Of having them at his command.  
Those sort  
Are even more dangerous than old royalty.  
Because at least royal tyrants  
Don't pretend that they're not kings.  
From what I heard, behind closed doors,  
Hward was even wearing a crown, by the end.  
  
He was a lover of machines,  
Built machines to control the dream we were in—  
To make it ours, he said—  
But I think if he'd had the chance,  
He'd have used them to make us his.  
He reminds me of the Koopa King  
They're always fighting in the west.  
He claims to be all about the rights of the workers  
And the liberation of the Goombaland  
But I know he'd throw their lives away in a heartbeat  
If it meant furthering one of his private romantic schemes.  
  
But back then,  
We believed in Hward.  
You can see what he meant  
To our secret tribe of misfits and throwbacks  
And thousands of others like us,  
All across the country.  
Hward meant the end of the Mushroom Kings,  
And to us,  
That meant escape,  
That meant an answer,  
That meant no more hiding in the shadows,  
That meant no more loneliness, fear, and pain,  
That meant the chance to step out into the light at last  
And be real.  
It meant the return of everything we'd lost.  
Or so we thought then.  
We threw ourselves into his campaign,  
Passed out his flyers,  
Chanted his name in the streets,  
Sang his songs.  
His plans traveled whisper by whisper from ear to ear,  
And on his day of reckoning, we struck—  
We took back the cities from your toadies' garrisons,  
Wrestled the muskets from their hands.  
They fled like startled birds  
And we exulted.  
Oh, it was going well, at first.  
Then you came.  
Then came the war.  
  
We'd been naive.  
You weren't about to let us hang on  
To what you'd so rightfully stolen.  
You turned your gaze to us,  
And brought down upon us  
All the force you had to wield.  
Allow me to introduce the brave and dashing protagonists  
Of the Mushroom Kingdom's glorious campaign  
To retake the savage barbarian south:  
  
First, of course, there was you,  
The man in red.  
Yes, it's your face  
That swims in my mind as I spit these words.  
Oh, to the toadstools you seemed marvelous and new,  
A hero from another world.  
But me? I recognized your face.  
The Mushroom Kings are stretched and weak,  
Their dynasty liable to shatter,  
And what happens?  
Another visitor from their world  
Arrives with a smirk on his face  
To replenish the line.  
You were the same as ever,  
Coming to dream  
Your harsh and kingly dreams anew,  
Just a different incarnation,  
But the same creature, down to the fluffy black mustache.  
You didn't fool me for a moment.  
  
Now, everybody's heard your story by now.  
As I said, you just won't shut up about it.  
So here I'll just point out why that is:  
Because you've used it to win  
A different kind of crown,  
And you want to keep it in place.  
Set yourself up as a hero,  
And the world will beat a path to your door.  
But I know what you are.  
You're the man with an eye on getting  
Everything he can get.  
You're here to strike it rich.  
Don't try to deny that your alter ego  
Is a man whose very clothes are gold—  
Wealth's all you want.  
Your half-staged heroics  
Give you a cushy sheet in the tallest tower,  
All the linguini you can swill,  
And a straight path into the royal line.  
But beyond all that,  
For every war you fight,  
You make coins out of the rubble.  
You lay waste to the countryside again and again,  
And when the smoke dies down,  
You come in and offer to build pipes and highways,  
For a small profit,  
And when they're laid,  
You come and smash them up again.  
You're a profiteer, man in red,  
And I can think of no worse livelihood than yours:  
Making it rich on the deaths of those who fight for you  
And the deaths of we who'd see you gone.  
  
Next, the Princess Regent  
Of the Mushroom Kingdom,  
Running the throne in place  
Of a father at death's door.  
She's an odd one.  
I've got my eye on her.  
There are two stories about the Princess.  
One's the story you tell,  
How she found a great hero in you,  
Who saved her from a monstrous dragon,  
And together you lived happily ever after.  
The other's the tale whispered in private rooms,  
In back alleys, in dark and smoky taverns:  
How she learned to escape, night by night,  
From a man she didn't love  
To solace in a dragon's keep.  
  
Which one do I believe?  
The latter, for two reasons:  
One, because where there's power, there are secrets,  
Two, because in every portrait, at every harvest festival,  
Every time she's come home at the end of a war,  
I've seen her blue eyes looking past you,  
Darting to the edges,  
Wanting to get away.  
  
When she came,  
She was a strange presence in our land,  
Her robes brightly-colored, blossom-pink,  
But her face pale and worn.  
She moved through our country  
Like a ghost in a crown,  
Her manner rarefied,  
Her feet scarcely touching the ground.  
She played the part of a philanthropist,  
Pulling up food from nowhere  
To serve starving, suffering victims of war.  
But there was a trick to it.  
The food she summoned was a weapon—  
She gave it only to those who swore loyalty to her,  
Having snatched it away  
From all those who'd risen against her.  
That was her way.  
  
Still, I have some sympathy for her,  
At least when I see the fear, the frustration,  
In those wide, fleeing eyes.  
She's trapped by you  
Every bit as much as I am.  
By you,  
And by the laws her ancestors wrote for her  
In a time long past.  
So I can't fault her  
For running away,  
For taking comfort where she can get it.  
But I'll only extend that so far.  
She's still one of your line.  
As heavy as her crown may be,  
I notice she doesn't seem to want to set it down.  
If she was willing to give up on your rules, your ways,  
She might long ago have left her cage for good.  
But she'll never do that.  
Power comes as naturally to her as peerage.  
She'll never dismantle the oligarchy  
That made her the monarch she is—  
Griefs and solitude and all.  
For that she has my pity,  
If not my forgiveness.  
  
Thirdly, there was your brother,  
The man in green.  
He always follows in your wake,  
Slower to action, perhaps,  
But ever eager to join you.  
Oh, he claims to make up his own mind.  
He'll argue with you, sure,  
Critique your excesses,  
Question your reasoning.  
He pretends to offer a democratic response  
To your iron command.  
But I've noticed  
He always lets you win.  
He's complicit  
In everything you do.  
He'll never shout you down,  
And in the end,  
He always stays your loyal ally,  
Making a mockery of the dissent he claims.  
  
He's happy to rescue you  
From a house full of the ghosts of your own sins,  
Blow the place down, even.  
And if someone puts the truth in his path.  
He's happy to leap right over it,  
His eyes unseeing, eerie, blind.  
I make no alliances with him,  
And around him I'll always watch my back.  
  
And last of all  
Came the mushroom soldiers,  
The toadies of your regime,  
Who'd served you for so long  
That they'd forgotten  
What it was like to live anywhere  
But inside the walls of your dream.  
On and on they came, arrayed in armies,  
Able to strike where you could not,  
With the swiftness of lightning,  
And terrible might.  
As they'd helped you seek your princess,  
So they helped you seek our weakest points  
And the castle of our leader.  
They were your tool, your weapon,  
As they'd been since long ago,  
And without them,  
You'd never have brought us down.  
  
These were the enemies we faced.  
When your soldiers massed on the horizon,  
Hward called his closest aides and generals to him,  
Told them he had a plan.  
He was lying,  
Down to the bottom of his throat.  
But we didn't know that then.  
  
He told us to fight,  
And we obeyed.  
He had an army of wondrous creatures:  
Fairies, bird-men, serpents, mice,  
And Bar Doi of every shade and name.  
In us he had tools to match your toadies.  
Around our once-marshy city,  
Nestled in the Umma Valley,  
He ordered us to stand  
And wait the coming of our foe.  
  
It was there,  
In a surprise attack on the East Gate,  
That I found out how you operate.  
You always make a beeline for your target.  
Throw some soldiers at the host,  
More as a distraction than anything else,  
Then fight your way through until you find a king,  
And take him on.  
Not a complex plan, but it works.  
I saw you, then.  
It was the first time  
We'd ever met face to face.  
I was up on the ramparts,  
Trying to hold them,  
And then you came,  
A streak of red,  
Bounding up any foothold that'd carry you.  
I tried to bar your way,  
Knowing who you were,  
Shot eggs at you,  
Randomly, flinching,  
Without a plan,  
But you leapt  
And snatched them from the air  
And threw them back at me.  
My surprise  
Gave you the time to rush in  
And deliver your signature move:  
A flying kick to the head.  
You were so close  
I could smell the sweat,  
Feel your heat,  
See denim and leather flying at me—  
And then pain, and heaviness,  
And darkness.  
  
When I woke up,  
The whole situation had changed.  
The man in red was after Hward,  
They said. Our town  
Had just been a bump in his road.  
Our gates were still holding,  
Just barely.  
Only a few lone fighters like him  
Had slipped through.  
But he was long gone now,  
Having found out what he wanted to know.  
He was heading for a castle in the mountains,  
Within which Hward had sealed himself  
Behind a barricade of iron and stone,  
His glorious machines at his side.  
  
I wandered through the city,  
Seeing huddled people,  
Faces ablaze with fear,  
Until I found my company again.  
Our commander was there,  
One of the alpine bird-men, the Pyjit,  
Draped in his embroidered stole.  
"Get going," he snapped,  
With a clack of his beak.  
"We're heading out."  
We learned that Hward  
Was bringing every single fighter in his army  
To the frosty mountains,  
To guard his castle.  
He wanted us to leave the city,  
Abandon it to its fate.  
  
We whispered to each other:  
Could this be true?  
For the mushroom men  
Had almost overcome our gates.  
If we left,  
No one would stop them.  
We'd seen what they'd done before,  
Ravaging their way across the countryside,  
Looting whatever they could,  
Burning field and farm and village.  
They'd do the same here,  
Slaughtering everyone,  
Blood in the streets,  
And black ashes  
Where a city had been.  
Most of us had been born here, grown up here.  
To think of our friends and neighbors and family  
Slain without anyone to turn to—  
It was too much.  
Hward had badly misread us  
To think we'd let that pass.  
  
Some'll tell you we abandoned him.  
The truth is,  
He'd already abandoned us.  
When I heard the news,  
I trembled, trying to understand.  
And then, in a flash, I knew the truth.  
Hward was not the man we'd thought he was.  
He didn't care at all about us.  
The heartland meant nothing to him,  
Because he'd let it burn to save his own hide.  
He was throwing our lives away.  
I shook for a moment,  
There in the back of the crowd,  
Tasting this bitter truth,  
Stung by silent sobs of grief.  
Then I wiped the tears from my eyes,  
And pushed my way to the front.  
  
I looked the man who'd been my commander  
Right in the eyes, unflinching.  
And I told him no.  
I told him we weren't leaving the city.  
And I told him why.  
He squawked and sputtered,  
Clacked his beak.  
But all around me,  
There came murmurs of agreement,  
Growing louder,  
Bursting into shouts of defiance.  
A chorus of voices  
Unwilling to give their home up for lost.  
  
In the end, most of us refused to go.  
Less than a quarter of the former regiment  
Went with the former commander.  
When they had left our sight,  
To slip out the back gate,  
We cheered to see them gone.  
Then the moment faded;  
Our spirits paled.  
What now?  
We were without order or guidance  
With a threat right at our door.  
"Come on," I said, defiant.  
"We can still win this."  
And others were nodding,  
Echoing my words,  
Pointing the way,  
And we made for the battered gates,  
And there, who did we find but other companies,  
From all over the city,  
Who'd made the same choice  
And were doing the same thing.  
  
We measured our chances.  
Our numbers were lower,  
So we didn't know if we could hold out.  
But a call went out across the city.  
We ran through the streets, asking  
If there was anyone who'd help us now,  
Anyone who'd keep our enemy  
From passing through those gates.  
  
And they came.  
By the Marsh, they came.  
People young and old,  
Who'd stayed out of the civil war  
But refused to see their homes put to the flame.  
Farmers came with their pitchforks and reapers,  
Bakers with their rolling pins and pokers,  
Butchers with their sharpest knives  
And tavern-keepers with broken glass bottles,  
Elders, making their way slowly up the ramparts,  
The older children, weighing iron in their hands  
With bravado and fear.  
Some brought burning oil to pour on the invaders,  
Others old bows,  
Others tools like telescopes  
To help us plan our fight.  
They came on and on,  
And fought alongside us,  
And together,  
We did not let the city burn.  
  
The city gave us its heart,  
And we trusted in its strength.  
And we gave as good as we got—  
People started looking to our group  
For guidance, for aid,  
And as some of us knocked soldiers off the walls  
With farming tools,  
Others among our number drew up plans,  
Gathered information, made teams  
To run supplies where they were needed:  
Bandages and salves for the wounded,  
Bread and oranges for the hungry.  
Wherever there was a need,  
We were there to listen and help.  
  
I was among that number,  
Was a courier, a fighter, a planner—  
And folks listened to me, respected my advice—  
But I never sought to be their leader,  
Just a helpful face in the crowd.  
Because it wasn't me who did it.  
It was all of us.  
We who were gathered there,  
Mouse and bird and serpent and raptor,  
And every shade and clan of Bar Doi,  
Rebels and pilgrims,  
Farmers and fighters and clerks,  
We, not anyone alone,  
Won that day.  
  
We turned the tide.  
The Mushroom troops pulled out,  
Abandoning their siege,  
To seek easier prey.  
The city stood,  
And we escaped the worst  
Of the ravages of the war.  
  
They told us later  
The man in red found his target.  
Hward died in a mountain fortress,  
Surrounded by his bodyguards and machines,  
Poisoned by extracts from his own garden.  
When we heard this news, most wept,  
But—truth be told—my eyes were dry.  
I'd already grieved for the man  
Who would have been king,  
And stirring, growing in me  
Was the start of a different kind of hope.  
  
When the mushroom kings returned to our gates,  
They found a city alive and holding strong,  
Thanks to its people,  
Who didn't flinch or turn away.  
It was thanks to that strength  
We could negotiate.  
Too late, of course,  
Was it to win the war.  
But we were still fit enough  
To fight tooth and nail,  
If they pressed the issue.  
  
But the Mushroom Regent pursed her lips  
And said she didn't want another fight.  
If our city would take charge of the others,  
Begin to rebuild the country,  
And of course, swear fealty to her once more,  
She would not turn her spears on us.  
And in her eyes we saw  
She didn't want to try to breach our gates.  
Tired, weary of war, we agreed.  
But not without making demands of our own.  
We demanded first  
The funds to rebuild,  
To bring back the burned fields  
And shattered towns.  
And she, looking worn—and perhaps a bit afraid—  
Gave her word.  
  
It wasn't victory, to be sure.  
Not by any means.  
But there was a savage triumph in it, too.  
We'd faced our enemies with dignity,  
And wrestled concessions from their grasp  
And respect.  
We didn't abandon our families,  
Our homes, our land.  
We stayed and fought.  
And in the end,  
That was our strength.  
  
And I realized, then  
That we didn't need a man like Hward  
To break out of your dream.  
All we needed was ourselves.  
And we could take back our strength from you  
Without you even understanding what we'd done.  
  
*  
  
So, listen:  
I've been doing what I do  
And fighting my fight  
For years now,  
And I've got a pretty good idea these days  
Of how to go about it.  
Everything I learned back on those walls  
Has served me well since.  
I know how to break your rules and win.  
I know how to step out of the dark  
And shine in the light.  
I know how to break out of your dream  
And find what's real,  
And make it be so.  
But it isn't done by heroes.  
I don't believe in heroes,  
Not on your side or mine.  
I believe in people.  
  
Not in The People,  
Not in some abstract value  
Like that old frog used to toss around,  
But in the actual flesh-and-blood creatures  
Who make up this world.  
Ordinary people leading their complicated  
And extraordinary lives.  
Farmers, scholars, teachers, bakers, clerks.  
Mothers and daughters and sisters and orphans.  
I believe that they can remake the world.  
It's hard and painful and messy work,  
But I think that's the only way to do it.  
It isn't done by one person alone.  
It's done by many.  
It's done by hundreds of people learning  
That the lies they were taught are wrong.  
It's done by them getting on their feet  
And doing something because enough is enough.  
It isn't done by one figurehead,  
One gallant hero.  
It can't be.  
Heroes can lie to you, and heroes can fall.  
But a tribe can remember a secret,  
And a people can refuse to be conquered,  
And a city can fight.  
  
There's still a revolution on these streets,  
But it isn't one that flies a king's flag.  
It's a revolution of thought and a revolution of art  
And a revolution of language.  
And our fight is fought by gathering in the streets,  
Asking that you see who we are  
And listen to our words.  
It's fought by demanding justice  
And refusing to be silent  
Until justice is done.  
It's fought not by taking down your flags,  
But by showing you that you don't have the strength to contain us.  
It's fought by turning your profit into loss,  
By breaking your tools  
And making you work to get them back,  
It's fought in coffee-houses and art houses  
And libraries and schools.  
It's fought by wearing our clothes and singing our songs  
And refusing the identities you gave us.  
It's breaking out of your shell.  
It's washing your illusions from our bodies and minds.  
It's waking up from your dream.  
It's making a new dream for ourselves.  
  
See, the thing about dreaming,  
Is that the moment you know you're doing it,  
The moment you know the difference  
Between illusion and reality,  
You have the power to make anything in the world happen.  
You can rewrite the dream.  
  
Think of the world, the dream,  
As a great net, like our fishers used to make.  
The net stretches from horizon to horizon,  
As vast as the sky, never ending.  
Each of us is a node,  
A place where the shining lines connect.  
And the lines are all the connections  
Between us and everyone we've ever met.  
This web, seen from afar, becomes the world.  
There are two ways to live, knowing this.  
You can see yourself at the mercy of that net,  
Pushed to and fro by its movements.  
But look again  
And you're a source of movement,  
Making your own changes to the fabric,  
Sending energy out through your connections  
To the whole of the universe.  
So, too, with dreams.  
We're all the dreamer.  
All it takes is a shift in perspective  
To become the teller of the tale.  
  
That's my work, too.  
Not only fighting back  
Against the laws and evils you've made,  
But retelling your stories, too.  
Taking those who you call low  
And raising them high,  
Taking those who you've made high  
And casting them to the ground.  
There's always something there to work with,  
Someone to move to the center  
And make everything change.  
Someone you've overlooked.  
  
I first heard about myself in your stories.  
They were terrible stories,  
But came as revelations all the same.  
And ever since,  
I've picked apart your tales and made them my own.  
Even a joke can be a point of entry,  
Even a crass remark meant to cast us low.  
Because even when you're telling lies about us,  
That you feel the need tells me something.  
It tells me we're here.  
We're here, and your confidence  
Is already starting to slip,  
Because you can't get rid of us.  
And knowing we're here  
Just might be enough  
For some young soul  
To catch a glimpse of an answer,  
Set out on the right path.  
That's what your jokes did for me, after all.  
So in repayment, both revenge and reward,  
I'm here to turn the jokes back around on you.  
To erase the lies and tell longer, truer stories,  
Stories like the ones you gave yourself.  
And when you see yourself refracted in my tales,  
I think you'll know that something's changing,  
That the dream-figments have taken over the dream  
And made something which to your eyes  
Looks like a nightmare.  
  
Can it be done?  
Can we take your tools  
And set them to our own purposes?  
Can we take your bricks and mortar  
And build our own world from pieces of yours?  
Can the Subconian speak?  
  
Yes.  
That's my answer.  
Yes, oh, yes indeed, she can.  
She's speaking all over the land  
In cafes and museums and libraries  
And schools and churches,  
She's speaking on street corners  
And at kitchen tables,  
In newspapers and underground magazines,  
In comic strips and murals and fairy tales,  
In every place words can be spoken,  
She's there, speaking, right now.  
She's speaking in a million voices,  
Wears a million faces,  
Has a million names,  
And mine is one of them.  
  
My voice is not the whole of hers  
But it's one meaningful part.  
I'm one of many who make up  
Her restless motion forward,  
And each of us is a symbol  
Of what the world could be.  
Not as any kind of hero, then,  
But as a metonym for a new dream,  
I'll ask again:  
Who am I?  
  
I'm the answer to any question  
About what we dare to dream.  
I'm a whispered plan in a dark room  
Lit by neon signs.  
I'm the rebel in the street breaking your laws and rules,  
Smashing them to bits  
Until you can't patch them up again.  
I'm the end of the old world and the start of the new.  
  
So call me "Birdo" if you like.  
It's a moniker I'll readily accept.  
I'm happy to stand before you  
As a representative of my people.  
A Birdo you can't control.  
A Birdo whose unflinching opposition  
Gives you reason to fear.  
But if you want to know who I really am?  
If you want to know my real name?  
It's Catherine.  
And if I'm going to be called anything,  
I'd rather it be Cathy.  
That's who I am.  
  
And I know because I chose that name.  
Every inch of it, every syllable is mine.  
I know the meaning of every letter.  
The A blazes like a beacon in the night,  
The T and H are partners, twirling together,  
The Y's an elegant sweep of a dancer's feet,  
And the C is my graffito, my insignia, my mark.  
If you've seen it sprayed on walls,  
Carved into tree bark,  
You can be sure I've dropped by.  
Two slashes—  
Zorro never had it so good.  
And it's another symbol, too—  
From one side it says that your burnt-out  
Assumptions and lies  
Are less than all we could be,  
And from the other, that we're greater than this,  
Greater than any shell you try to hide us behind.  
That's what's in a name.  
  
Add to that Uwayo,  
A family name,  
A marsh-name,  
That survived every assault  
To make its way down to me.  
I am proud of that name.  
Who am I?  
I'm Cathy Uwayo,  
And I am beautiful.  
  
I've retold the story of myself  
On my own body—  
An imperfect canvas, to be sure,  
But a worthy one,  
On which I've made a great work.  
I'm as pink as any cherry-blossom in the spring.  
And I am lithe and sleek  
And move with urgency and grace,  
My eyes are large and bright and my lashes long,  
And when I leave the water,  
How I shine!  
And my limbs are smooth,  
But my muscles are strong.  
I'm not as small as some,  
But I make my own sense of space.  
I paint my claws as red as sunrise  
And as purple as night.  
I mark my lips crimson  
And celebrate my long and splendid snout.  
I spit eggs with precision and force,  
And their shells are strong,  
And they shatter like grenades.  
And I pick up the pieces and make art with them  
That would make you marvel and stare,  
And I taste deeply of their yolk.  
And I crown myself with red ribbons  
That flow down around my head,  
And wear gowns that make me shine, jewel-bright.  
Every inch of me is Yevv and proud.  
  
But I'm even more than this,  
For I am Uzuzb, too—  
I, too, have heard the shaman's call,  
And I flow between my colors like the marsh-water,  
Change like the seasons and live  
On the edges of autumn.  
I am large, containing in me multitudes.  
My skin pulses with trails of scarlet,  
Mingling with the fuchsia,  
And my little flames smell of sulfur,  
And my eggs are often speckled and dark.  
I, too, wear the beads of Benna,  
Work to drive the demons from our souls;  
I, too, am untranslatable.  
And not a bit tamed.  
And the voice I sound,  
Over rooftops and mossy valleys,  
Can move from a bird's high fluting  
To murmurings in my own language,  
Secret and sonorous and deep.  
I am proud of what I've made  
On this palimpsest of self.  
  
And I tell it like it's already done,  
But it's not, not really.  
It's a work that's gone on all my life  
And will go on still—  
This business of putting together myself  
Piece by experimental piece,  
Day by day.  
I am always becoming.  
And if I'm patient,  
I can see the grace in that.  
  
I'm not a perfect person.  
I'm not the sort you'd pick for a hero.  
I'm prickly and angry  
And don't always make the right choices.  
I don't tell people what they want to hear  
And sometimes I don't fit into any story but my own.  
But I, too, deserve to exist.  
To live and to love and to be.  
I don't have to be a perfect story;  
I don't have to be a goddess—  
And in fact, I'd rather be  
My mixed-up little mortal self.  
I think that's a better way to live.  
  
And the nice thing about fighting together  
Is that you don't have to be perfect  
And you don't have to walk alone.  
I'm a symbol only as much as all my friends are.  
And that makes it work.  
Whether or not I've reforged any links  
With those who raised me,  
Whatever I choose,  
I know that my family is all around me,  
Because the blood of the covenant we've made together  
Is stronger than the water of any egg or womb.  
I'm surrounded by mentors who've taught me trues,  
And those I, too, have taught in turn.  
And I love a girl of the Bar Doi,  
Amanda, brilliant and bold,  
And a child of the Yoshi people,  
Kemash, who moves and thinks like an Uzub,  
But with green scales gleaming bright.  
And the two loves make each other stronger.  
My heart is big enough for all that love.  
Together we form a surging tide,  
Crash over any obstacle you set before us,  
And at the same time link arms and form a bulwark  
Against any force you set against us.  
That's who we are.  
  
Together our task is to take the world you've handed us  
And dream it into something better.  
We'll use your very tools  
To mend the damage you've done.  
You say you made me civilized?  
You say you taught me language?  
Well, if you taught me language,  
My profit on it  
Is that I know how to say "Fuck your bullshit."  
And I'll keep using your language  
To say what's wrong  
And how to fix it.  
Our task is to dismantle your barbed words  
And put them together into a better story.  
A better world.  
  
It won't be the old world,  
The one we had before you came.  
The pieces of that world  
Can't be put back together again.  
Not completely.  
It'll have to be something new.  
A story in which you play a part  
Only as the darkness is there  
To be a backdrop for the shining stars.  
It'll be the story of our brilliance,  
How we shone out of your gloom  
And made dazzling constellations together.  
We intend to make them right here and now  
In the city we call home.  
We're set on justice,  
And we won't rest until everyone  
In every city in the southern lands  
Can live without hunger or fear or pain.  
  
Don't try to point to your Nailed God  
To tell us who we are and what we do is shameful—  
I've read your holy books,  
And your god would be here marching in the streets.  
He never claimed to be the banker in his tower,  
But the young outcast dying in her hunger in the streets.  
He's got more in common with Benna than you think.  
It doesn't surprise me your people killed him,  
A teacher willing to overturn the world.  
  
That's us, too,  
And when I ask for justice,  
I don't mean the kind in which  
You pull out one knife  
While bringing another closer to our throats.  
The toadstools tell us  
That you've lessened your rules for them recently.  
They no longer have to fall into your categories,  
But can abstain from the system if they choose,  
And marry whoever they like.  
That's something and I won't discount it.  
But it isn't enough.  
It's not enough,  
When my people and many others  
Are kept out of all your systems,  
When your relentless engine of gold-making  
Grinds us all to dust,  
When your guards can abuse and maim us with impunity,  
And Turning keeps us from a job or a home.  
That all still needs to change  
Before there's a world with any justice in it.  
  
And I believe that world will come,  
But it's not inevitable.  
It'll happen, if it happens,  
Because thousands of people got on their feet  
And did the difficult work  
Needed to bring it about.  
So don't try to keep me away  
With your excuses and aphorisms.  
This is the holy work we're here to do.  
  
Bit by bit I see it coming together,  
A patchwork of the pieces of our lost past  
And the story of our resurrection.  
And whatever role I have in that,  
It's a part I'm happy to play.  
I believe in us.  
And I believe our time is now.  
  
  
*  
  
And what, finally, of you?  
I don't know whether you'll ever hear me.  
I don't know if you even can.  
But I'll keep spitting my words into the universe  
And I won't count you out just yet.  
I'm not sure you can see the world  
We're building in your shadow,  
And if you could see it,  
You might recoil and call it monstrous.  
But—even if you don't believe me when I say it—  
There's a place for you in that world,  
If you want it.  
  
You're afraid of us, I know.  
You don't know what we portend.  
I remember your stare from the top box  
When I visited your kingdom for a tennis tournament.  
When you saw the strength of my serve,  
Your eyes narrowed,  
As if daring me to admit my monstrousness.  
But you know what the funny thing is?  
I know something you don't know,  
And it's that there's nothing to be afraid of.  
There's no monster at the end of this book.  
Nothing about us is vile or evil.  
You just don't know that yet.  
I called myself the conjuror of your nightmare,  
But honestly,  
It's only a nightmare  
If you want it to be.  
  
There's a part of you, true,  
I'd like to see die.  
That greedy force that clings to your mind,  
Lives through the ages  
With all the immortality of an idea—  
That part of you has plenty to fear from me.  
If I could kill it,  
I'd call that victory enough for a lifetime.  
But I know it's tenacious,  
And so I'll count myself lucky  
If I can do something to hasten its end.  
  
But the other part of you, the mortal part—  
And here I'm speaking to every fleshy mortal man  
Who thought his only choice was to bind our people—  
You're trapped too.  
You're in a cage made out of yourself,  
Victim of the demon you carry with you,  
Trapped in a dream, unable to wake.  
Because at the root of your hatred, your cruelty  
Is fear.  
You see us and see only creatures that would poison you,  
Shame you, pollute you,  
Ghouls to drag you down to hell,  
And you hate yourself for what you might become.  
  
But it's all a lie.  
It's something your fathers made up and passed to you  
But it has nothing to do with reality.  
You think it's the source of your strength,  
But your evil dream's the only thing that's poisoned you,  
The only source of your all pain.  
If you'll listen,  
I am trying to tell you  
What someone once told me:  
Wake up.  
  
It's possible,  
Believe me.  
You can look around and see the falseness of your dream.  
And if you do that, you'll find  
There aren't any monsters anymore.  
Not even us.  
You'll be free,  
With nothing left to fight.  
Imagine never being afraid.  
Never fearing that there's something wrong  
With the way you look,  
The way you act,  
The way you speak to the women you love.  
Imagine seeing all the fear and anger for what it is:  
An illusion.  
Something that made sense when you were a child,  
But now it's time to put away childish things.  
Imagine never again jumping at shadows.  
Imagine knowing who you are  
And that who you are is beautiful.  
There's nothing else in the world like that silence  
When all the lies drop away.  
  
I don't know if it's what you deserve,  
But it's what I'm offering to you.  
It's your choice if you want to continue  
As you've always done  
Or start something new.  
It's your call.  
  
I believe you will say yes, one day.  
It won't happen for a very long time.  
It might only happen when the last star goes out  
At the very end of time.  
But on that day,  
You and I will meet as friends.  
You'll take off your plumber's cap  
And lay it on the ground,  
And with it, all the fears and absolutes  
You carried with you all your childhood.  
And you'll feel the weight lifted from you  
And breathe freely,  
Filled with joy.  
We'll eat at the same table, you and I,  
And we'll look back on our stories together,  
Feast well,  
And wonder how it all could have been so strange.  
And when the feasting's done,  
We'll paint ourselves bright colors,  
And you'll wear whatever pleases you,  
Gown or jewels or robe,  
Be radiant and serene, mustache and all,  
Not because you're telling a joke,  
But because you really mean what you say,  
Because it's so good to be beautiful and alive.  
  
And we'll dance, you and I,  
Under a bright harvest moon,  
To a flute and a drum,  
While all the ones we love  
Look on and cheer,  
And raise a toast to one more dance.  
One day, at the end of all the stories,  
We'll dance.  
That's my promise to you.  
Look forward to it,  
On the day you see with new eyes.  
On the day you break the shell.  
  
Until that day,  
I promise to be your fiercest enemy.  
I'll be the vandal smashing your windows,  
I'll be the shadow that chases you at night,  
I'll be in the streets and in the taverns and in every city,  
Singing songs you don't understand.  
I'll be the one to challenge all you believe,  
Tear down everything that seems solid to you,  
Build something frightening and new under the moonlight,  
Until one day,  
You ask the right question,  
And in a rush you understand.  
  
Until that day,  
I'll be out there, somewhere,  
In the city I love,  
With the people I love,  
Speaking my words  
And fighting my fight.  
  
I'll be waiting for you.  
  
Come find me if you can.  
  



End file.
